- Email: [email protected]
UAVs in the US and EU
NEWS Editorial office: Elsevier Advanced Technology PO Box 150 Kidlington Oxford OX5 1AS United Kingdom Tel:+44 (0)1865 843194 Fax: +44 (0)1865 853971 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.pvbulletin.com Editor: Gail Purvis Programme Editor: Steve Barrett Production Co-ordinator: Esther Ibbotson Editorial board: Alan Delahoy, USA Robert Freling, USA Jeremy Leggett, UK Larry Kazmerski, USA Lou Raveson, USA Gerhard Willeke, Germany Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier Science Rights & Permissions Department, PO Box 800, Oxford OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier. co.uk. You may also contact Rights & Permissions directly through Elsevier’s home page (http:// www.elsevier.nl), selecting first ‘Customer Support’, then ‘General Information’, then Permissions Query Form’. In the USA, users may clear permissions and make payments through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA; phone: (978) 7508400, fax: (978) 7504744, and in the UK through the Copyright Licensing Agency Rapid Clearance Service (CLARCS), 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP, UK; phone: (+44) 171 436 5931; fax: (+44) 171 436 3986. Other countries may have a local reprographic rights agency for payments. Derivative Works Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution. Permission of the publisher is required for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. Electronic Storage or Usage Permission of the publisher is required to store or use electronically any material contained in this journal, including any article or part of an article. Contact the publisher at the address indicated. Except as outlined above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Address permissions requests to: Elsevier Science Rights & Permissions Department, at the mail, fax and e-mail addresses noted above. Notice No responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. Although all advertising material is expected to conform to ethical a guarantee or endorsement of the quality or value of such product or of the claims made of it by its manufacturer.
00282 Printed by Mayfield Press (Oxford) LImited
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Photovoltaics Bulletin
[Continued from Page 1] However, quite a few researchers are working at a relatively low level of co-ordinated effort. Forming lasting networks will increase research activities to critical mass, in particular when tasksharing and co-ordination within the European Research Area, and stronger international cooperation can be achieved. In the EU, the participation of scientists of the future member-states will be a particular asset in forming ‘Networks of Excellence’. As an intermediate, short-term goal, the design of roadmaps for the various conceptual areas will be formulated. These will be used to assess progress, compare milestones and allow timely refinement. For more details, contact: Dr Arnulf Jäger-Waldau, European Commission; DG JRC IES Renewable Energies Unit, TP 450, I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy.
Japan focus on organic electronics Kyoto University, NTT, Pioneer, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Rohm have agreed to establish a comprehensive industrialacademic collaboration alliance, in order to create new industries through R&D for nextgeneration organic electronic devices. The members have also selected specific research. The alliance is expected to produce synergistic effects between the university’s topclass research results and the companies’ expertise in market-oriented engineering management. It will also enable private companies to collaborate with any division of Kyoto University to conduct mid- to long-term research projects. The members have selected 15 research topics, classified into five subjects. These focus on basic R&D for high-performance and flexible displays, and for organic solar cells and high-efficiency organic photoelectric conversion materials. Other development focus will be on organic large-capacity memory device technology and highly functional optical materials; functional nano-compound materials and device applications; and organic electronic devices, as well as those mentioned above. Each of the five companies will contribute ¥50m ($416,667) for the first year, and is likely to be asked to donate the same amount annually. Researchers are sourced 80 from university and 70 from the companies. For more information contact: Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. Tel: +81 75 753 2047, Web: www.kyoto-u.ac.jp
UK’s major PV demo Eight projects have won a share of the UK government grant through its Major PV Demonstration programme. The medium and large scale projects have each won a share of a £1.32m ($2m), and are the first to be approved under the £20m ($30.7m) funding. Projects include Ford’s Centre for Engineering & Manufacturing Excellence at Dagenham and Peabody’s roof refurbishment on a social housing block in North London. There are also medium sized projects, such as the transport interchange at Vauxhall Cross and a primary school in Wales. Minister for Energy, Brian Wilson said: ‘It is now crucial that British manufacturers of solar equipment start to build a supply chain for the growing solar market. I want to ensure that the UK revolution in renewable energy brings with it UK jobs.’ The government expects to create a £2bn annual market for renewable energy by 2010. The main driver is the renewables obligation on electricity suppliers to supply 10% of electricity from renewables. In addition a £260m support programme will be provided over the next three years.
UAVs in the US and EU The solar-powered, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Pathfinder Plus has flown a series of flights to test its capabilities as a high-altitude ‘antenna’ or ‘tower’ for telecoms. The wide-flying wing, whose upper surface is covered with PV panels, is one in a series of aircraft being tested. Officials are developing a UAV able to stay aloft for weeks or months without refuelling. Payloads on board the plane, part of a ‘nextgeneration telecommunications demonstration’ included digital TV broadcast equipment and cell-phone technology for voice, data, Internet and video images over cell phones. The communications gear is expected to go as high as 12 miles. Pathfinder Plus is part of a programme developed by AeroVironment, financed by NASA’s environmental research and sensor programme. The work is partly paid for by Japan’s Communications Research Lab. Project partner is Sky Tower, seeking to develop technology of winged communications platforms. NASA and AeroVironment are working on a light fuel cell technology to allow the craft to remain aloft at night. Ames Research, Dryden Flight Research, Clark University, and Girvan Institute, have established a ‘UAV Applications Center’ in NASA Research Park. Its charter is to conduct
September 2002
NEWS collaborative R&D, leading to enhanced scientific and commercial use of UAVs as highresolution digital imaging platforms of use in agricultural decision making, fighting forest fires, evaluating environmental change and assessing civil emergency response. The Amesbased team is currently conducting a $3.76m project providing commercial test use of a solarpowered UAV operating over the largest coffee plantation in the US, located on Kauai, Hawaii. One US problem is that companies producing UAVs for military use are not able to boost their production capacity substantially, according to a US military survey. This in turn limits procurement. Unit costs of UAVs have to be reduced drastically to make the craft viable and compatible. Demand by the US forces for the UAV is nearly unlimited, but many suppliers of UAVcomponents, from electronics to engines, are not traditional suppliers of the armed forces but very small companies. The US military has so far spent more than $6bn on UAVs, but has just about 100 craft in service Compared with NASA solar powered UAV work, the EU approach is Comets, focused on enabling coordination between several UAVs (helicopters and blimps). Its 2.94m ($2.9m) funding to 2005 will allow researchers from Germany, Spain, Portugal, France and Sweden to work on Comets use for forest fire detection and monitoring, as the scenario to demonstrate its system. Innovative aspects include a multi-UAV decentralised control system, a new hybrid control architecture, new control techniques, real-time fault tolerance, communications and cooperative environment perception. For more information go to: http://researchpark. arc.nasa.gov or http://www.comets-uavs.org
Microbe photosynthesis Analysis of the complete genome sequence of a photosynthetic microbe gives insights into how the light harvesting mechanism evolved, how it works today and its future potential. The bacterium, Chlorobium tepidum, originally isolated from a hot spring in New Zealand, is a member of the green-sulfur bacterial group. It depends on sulfur compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The bacteria are important because they perform photosynthesis in a different way from other bacteria or plants. Instead of the choloroplasts found in plants, green-sulfur bacteria have organelles called chlorosomes that help generate energy through an electron-transport chain in the microbe’s cytoplasmic membrane. Inside the chlorosomes, the chlorophyll and carotenoid molecules that capture light differ from the molecules that other
September 2002
species use to perform photosynthesis. Greensulfur bacteria carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen, and do not produce oxygen as a by-product as plants do. Jonathan A. Eisen, evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland says, ‘The ability to carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen is particularly important to evolutionary studies, since it is believed that the early atmosphere of earth had little oxygen.’ Some scientists have suggested the green-sulfur bacteria were the first photosynthetic organisms. The sequenced genome is the first time that a bacteria that is both photosynthetic and anaerobic has been sequenced. Green-sulfur bacteria such as C. tepidum are widely distributed in aquatic environments, where light reaches low-oxygen layers of water containing reduced sulfur compounds. TIGR researchers have identified numerous genes that may play new roles in photosynthesis or other processes that make use of the energy of light. Analysis also reveals the likely duplication of genes involved in the pathways for phytosynthesis and in the metabolism of sulfur and nitrogen. ‘These duplication events may help explain why this microbe is able to use lower light levels to carry out photosynthesis than other species,’ says Eisen. Another reason to study green-sulfur bacteria is that their mechanism of capturing CO2 differs from plants and other bacteria, using an unusual chemical cycle – called the reductive tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle – and not the Calvin Cycle used by higher plants. TCA uses electrons derived from hydrogen or reduced sulfur compounds to fix CO2 – in contrast to the Calvin Cycle, which requires oxygen. The reductive TCA cycle was first discovered in C. tepidum. For more information contact: Jonathan A. Eisen, Ph.D, Investigator, TIGR Tel: (301) 838-3507 Email:[email protected]
Korean solar homes The Korean government is to expand the number of solar powered homes to 30,000 by the year 2010, according to the its Ministry of Commerce, Industry & Energy (MOCIE), which said it would it would increase usage of 3 kW solar power generators to 10,000 houses by 2006, to 20,000 houses by 2008, and to 30,000 houses by 2010. ‘Households that install solar-powered generators will be subsidised from government’s special energy and resources project account covering 20% (W4m, $3.3m) of the installation
IN BRIEF India’s 100 kW development by 2003 The largest solar power plant in India is being set up at Maushuni Island in the Namkhana block. This is a joint venture between the centre and the state government. The West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) is carrying out the project. The installed capacity of the plant will be 100 kW, and 700 families will be supplied with power, said WBREDA director S.P. Gon Chowdhurry. The power plant will be operation by the end of the year.
China to aid Pakistan China has offered Pakistan both technical and financial assistance in the development of wind and solar energy, as a source of energy in Sindh and Balochistan. Feasibility reports on solar and wind energy have convinced China about its potential in Pakistan, with particular emphasis on Sindh and Balochistan. According to the reports, solar electrification systems for power, cooking, water pumping, running TV booster stations and operating desalination plants could work well in these coastal areas. Already a desalination plant with a 6,000 gpd capacity is working successfully at Gwadar on the Balochistan coast, along the Arabian Sea. There is potential for similar plants at settlements along the Balochistan coast and for Sindh coastal cities and towns. Efforts are also under way to introduce the use of solar coolers for cooling of houses and huts and for drying agricultural projects.
UK polls for renewables A small MORI survey of 973 people aged over 15, commissioned by Greenpeace, found that 72% preferred renewable energy to nuclear power. In addition it appears that 41% are less likely to vote for a political party if it supported nuclear power. The poll results come as the government is reviewing the UK’s energy sources for the next 50 years.
US Midwest PV yellow pages PV yellow pages will be available on CD-Rom and on the Internet, and will include information and contacts in the US Midwest for PV system designers, installers, maintainers, retailers, education, financial incentives, interconnection, net metering and manufacturers. This contrasts with the UK, where a Yell.com search gets entirely lost on photovoltaic categories, but can provide 60 matches for solar energy. For more information contact: Alex Moon, Tel: +1 515 281 7018. Email: alex.moon@dnr. state.ia.us, or in the UK go to www.yell.com
Photovoltaics Bulletin
3
00282 Printed by Mayfield Press (Oxford) LImited
2
Photovoltaics Bulletin
[Continued from Page 1] However, quite a few researchers are working at a relatively low level of co-ordinated effort. Forming lasting networks will increase research activities to critical mass, in particular when tasksharing and co-ordination within the European Research Area, and stronger international cooperation can be achieved. In the EU, the participation of scientists of the future member-states will be a particular asset in forming ‘Networks of Excellence’. As an intermediate, short-term goal, the design of roadmaps for the various conceptual areas will be formulated. These will be used to assess progress, compare milestones and allow timely refinement. For more details, contact: Dr Arnulf Jäger-Waldau, European Commission; DG JRC IES Renewable Energies Unit, TP 450, I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy.
Japan focus on organic electronics Kyoto University, NTT, Pioneer, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Rohm have agreed to establish a comprehensive industrialacademic collaboration alliance, in order to create new industries through R&D for nextgeneration organic electronic devices. The members have also selected specific research. The alliance is expected to produce synergistic effects between the university’s topclass research results and the companies’ expertise in market-oriented engineering management. It will also enable private companies to collaborate with any division of Kyoto University to conduct mid- to long-term research projects. The members have selected 15 research topics, classified into five subjects. These focus on basic R&D for high-performance and flexible displays, and for organic solar cells and high-efficiency organic photoelectric conversion materials. Other development focus will be on organic large-capacity memory device technology and highly functional optical materials; functional nano-compound materials and device applications; and organic electronic devices, as well as those mentioned above. Each of the five companies will contribute ¥50m ($416,667) for the first year, and is likely to be asked to donate the same amount annually. Researchers are sourced 80 from university and 70 from the companies. For more information contact: Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. Tel: +81 75 753 2047, Web: www.kyoto-u.ac.jp
UK’s major PV demo Eight projects have won a share of the UK government grant through its Major PV Demonstration programme. The medium and large scale projects have each won a share of a £1.32m ($2m), and are the first to be approved under the £20m ($30.7m) funding. Projects include Ford’s Centre for Engineering & Manufacturing Excellence at Dagenham and Peabody’s roof refurbishment on a social housing block in North London. There are also medium sized projects, such as the transport interchange at Vauxhall Cross and a primary school in Wales. Minister for Energy, Brian Wilson said: ‘It is now crucial that British manufacturers of solar equipment start to build a supply chain for the growing solar market. I want to ensure that the UK revolution in renewable energy brings with it UK jobs.’ The government expects to create a £2bn annual market for renewable energy by 2010. The main driver is the renewables obligation on electricity suppliers to supply 10% of electricity from renewables. In addition a £260m support programme will be provided over the next three years.
UAVs in the US and EU The solar-powered, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Pathfinder Plus has flown a series of flights to test its capabilities as a high-altitude ‘antenna’ or ‘tower’ for telecoms. The wide-flying wing, whose upper surface is covered with PV panels, is one in a series of aircraft being tested. Officials are developing a UAV able to stay aloft for weeks or months without refuelling. Payloads on board the plane, part of a ‘nextgeneration telecommunications demonstration’ included digital TV broadcast equipment and cell-phone technology for voice, data, Internet and video images over cell phones. The communications gear is expected to go as high as 12 miles. Pathfinder Plus is part of a programme developed by AeroVironment, financed by NASA’s environmental research and sensor programme. The work is partly paid for by Japan’s Communications Research Lab. Project partner is Sky Tower, seeking to develop technology of winged communications platforms. NASA and AeroVironment are working on a light fuel cell technology to allow the craft to remain aloft at night. Ames Research, Dryden Flight Research, Clark University, and Girvan Institute, have established a ‘UAV Applications Center’ in NASA Research Park. Its charter is to conduct
September 2002
NEWS collaborative R&D, leading to enhanced scientific and commercial use of UAVs as highresolution digital imaging platforms of use in agricultural decision making, fighting forest fires, evaluating environmental change and assessing civil emergency response. The Amesbased team is currently conducting a $3.76m project providing commercial test use of a solarpowered UAV operating over the largest coffee plantation in the US, located on Kauai, Hawaii. One US problem is that companies producing UAVs for military use are not able to boost their production capacity substantially, according to a US military survey. This in turn limits procurement. Unit costs of UAVs have to be reduced drastically to make the craft viable and compatible. Demand by the US forces for the UAV is nearly unlimited, but many suppliers of UAVcomponents, from electronics to engines, are not traditional suppliers of the armed forces but very small companies. The US military has so far spent more than $6bn on UAVs, but has just about 100 craft in service Compared with NASA solar powered UAV work, the EU approach is Comets, focused on enabling coordination between several UAVs (helicopters and blimps). Its 2.94m ($2.9m) funding to 2005 will allow researchers from Germany, Spain, Portugal, France and Sweden to work on Comets use for forest fire detection and monitoring, as the scenario to demonstrate its system. Innovative aspects include a multi-UAV decentralised control system, a new hybrid control architecture, new control techniques, real-time fault tolerance, communications and cooperative environment perception. For more information go to: http://researchpark. arc.nasa.gov or http://www.comets-uavs.org
Microbe photosynthesis Analysis of the complete genome sequence of a photosynthetic microbe gives insights into how the light harvesting mechanism evolved, how it works today and its future potential. The bacterium, Chlorobium tepidum, originally isolated from a hot spring in New Zealand, is a member of the green-sulfur bacterial group. It depends on sulfur compounds to carry out photosynthesis. The bacteria are important because they perform photosynthesis in a different way from other bacteria or plants. Instead of the choloroplasts found in plants, green-sulfur bacteria have organelles called chlorosomes that help generate energy through an electron-transport chain in the microbe’s cytoplasmic membrane. Inside the chlorosomes, the chlorophyll and carotenoid molecules that capture light differ from the molecules that other
September 2002
species use to perform photosynthesis. Greensulfur bacteria carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen, and do not produce oxygen as a by-product as plants do. Jonathan A. Eisen, evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland says, ‘The ability to carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen is particularly important to evolutionary studies, since it is believed that the early atmosphere of earth had little oxygen.’ Some scientists have suggested the green-sulfur bacteria were the first photosynthetic organisms. The sequenced genome is the first time that a bacteria that is both photosynthetic and anaerobic has been sequenced. Green-sulfur bacteria such as C. tepidum are widely distributed in aquatic environments, where light reaches low-oxygen layers of water containing reduced sulfur compounds. TIGR researchers have identified numerous genes that may play new roles in photosynthesis or other processes that make use of the energy of light. Analysis also reveals the likely duplication of genes involved in the pathways for phytosynthesis and in the metabolism of sulfur and nitrogen. ‘These duplication events may help explain why this microbe is able to use lower light levels to carry out photosynthesis than other species,’ says Eisen. Another reason to study green-sulfur bacteria is that their mechanism of capturing CO2 differs from plants and other bacteria, using an unusual chemical cycle – called the reductive tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle – and not the Calvin Cycle used by higher plants. TCA uses electrons derived from hydrogen or reduced sulfur compounds to fix CO2 – in contrast to the Calvin Cycle, which requires oxygen. The reductive TCA cycle was first discovered in C. tepidum. For more information contact: Jonathan A. Eisen, Ph.D, Investigator, TIGR Tel: (301) 838-3507 Email:[email protected]
Korean solar homes The Korean government is to expand the number of solar powered homes to 30,000 by the year 2010, according to the its Ministry of Commerce, Industry & Energy (MOCIE), which said it would it would increase usage of 3 kW solar power generators to 10,000 houses by 2006, to 20,000 houses by 2008, and to 30,000 houses by 2010. ‘Households that install solar-powered generators will be subsidised from government’s special energy and resources project account covering 20% (W4m, $3.3m) of the installation
IN BRIEF India’s 100 kW development by 2003 The largest solar power plant in India is being set up at Maushuni Island in the Namkhana block. This is a joint venture between the centre and the state government. The West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) is carrying out the project. The installed capacity of the plant will be 100 kW, and 700 families will be supplied with power, said WBREDA director S.P. Gon Chowdhurry. The power plant will be operation by the end of the year.
China to aid Pakistan China has offered Pakistan both technical and financial assistance in the development of wind and solar energy, as a source of energy in Sindh and Balochistan. Feasibility reports on solar and wind energy have convinced China about its potential in Pakistan, with particular emphasis on Sindh and Balochistan. According to the reports, solar electrification systems for power, cooking, water pumping, running TV booster stations and operating desalination plants could work well in these coastal areas. Already a desalination plant with a 6,000 gpd capacity is working successfully at Gwadar on the Balochistan coast, along the Arabian Sea. There is potential for similar plants at settlements along the Balochistan coast and for Sindh coastal cities and towns. Efforts are also under way to introduce the use of solar coolers for cooling of houses and huts and for drying agricultural projects.
UK polls for renewables A small MORI survey of 973 people aged over 15, commissioned by Greenpeace, found that 72% preferred renewable energy to nuclear power. In addition it appears that 41% are less likely to vote for a political party if it supported nuclear power. The poll results come as the government is reviewing the UK’s energy sources for the next 50 years.
US Midwest PV yellow pages PV yellow pages will be available on CD-Rom and on the Internet, and will include information and contacts in the US Midwest for PV system designers, installers, maintainers, retailers, education, financial incentives, interconnection, net metering and manufacturers. This contrasts with the UK, where a Yell.com search gets entirely lost on photovoltaic categories, but can provide 60 matches for solar energy. For more information contact: Alex Moon, Tel: +1 515 281 7018. Email: alex.moon@dnr. state.ia.us, or in the UK go to www.yell.com
Photovoltaics Bulletin
3